← Grumpy SEO Guy
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This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 39, the difference between good backlinks and bad backlinks, part 2. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because people are still confused about how to select a good site to get backlinks from. Now, hold on. That sounds kind of confusing and wordy and like. And you might not even be sure what I'm talking about. So let me give some background information here. We recently had an episode, it was episode 37, called the Difference between Good Backlinks and Bad Backlinks. And in this episode, I gave you different kinds of links, such as blog comment backlinks or contextual backlinks. And I told you which links were good and which links were bad. So this answers the question of what type of backlinks should I get. For example, blog comment backlinks are spammy and pretty useless. Contextual backlinks in the middle of a blog post, for example, are. Are awesome and helpful.
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Okay?
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But I said in that episode, there's an exception. And that exception is if the website is spammed. It doesn't matter what kind of backlink you get. You don't want it. Okay, now, in this episode, we're gonna continue with that, and we're gonna talk about what makes a website spammy. How do I know? Okay, but before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. So we've already covered this topic a little bit in episode three. In episode three, we talk about how to search for and buy authoritative domains.
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Okay.
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And there's a lot of criteria that I give in that episode for what things to look for. Cause there's a lot of stuff. You can't just buy any old domain. You have to make sure that it wasn't used for spammy purposes. And there's a whole lot of things that you have to check. So maybe you're not actually buying a domain though. Maybe you just would like a backlink on a domain, but you're not sure. Is this a good domain? Is this a spammy domain? Well, guess what? I'm gonna help you answer that question. So let's get started. I know I just mentioned it, but if you want like a really in depth answer, go listen to episode three. If you haven't listened to it yet. But if you haven't listened to it, that's fine because we're gonna talk about some of the stuff here too. It's like a little different because you're not actually buying the domain, but you know, it does matter. Okay, let's get started. There are a few things that you need to look for. Now, the first thing that we're gonna talk about is IP address. I'm gonna explain why this is important and this is gonna be kind. I feel like I gave the same exact preface when I talked about this before. So this is gonna be kind of long and boring.
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Okay?
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But it's super important, so I don't know, you should just listen to it anyway. Okay. Every website. I'm gonna keep it super simple. Every website has an IP address. An IP address is four numbers. Okay, let's call them A, B, C, d. Okay? Just four random numbers. And there are 256 possibilities for each number. Okay, so you know what, look, you could spend your entire life on the Internet and not ever have to know about IP addresses. So you just have to kind of know about it sometimes for SEO. So like, if you've never heard of this before, whatever, it doesn't matter. Okay, so there's four numbers. A, B, C, D. Let me give you an example. IP address. Okay, let's say 70 dot, 80 dot, 250. Now, I don't know what, I don't know what that is. I just made up some numbers. Okay, but that's not the point. That's what an IP address looks like. Okay, makes sense. Now you need to know the IP address. And by the way, it's super easy to find the IP address of a website. Literally, just go to Google and type in like IP address of a website. And pretty much every result will take you to a page where you can type in the website address and it will give you its IP anyway.
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Okay?
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So once you get the IP of a website, there's a couple things to pay attention to. Now, some people are going to say that there are certain IP ranges that you shouldn't get links from. You know, I'm not going to even talk about that right now. I might do an episode on that in the future. Future. Don't worry about that for now. But let me just put it like this. If you're getting one backlink, the IP address doesn't matter. IP addresses start to matter when you get backlinks from multiple websites. Let me explain the reason for this. Before I explain the reason for this, let me tell you what you need to look for. So remember I said there's four numbers, right? A, B, C, D. And those numbers can be whatever. It's just. I'm just calling them A, B, C and D. Okay? Now I want to be very clear about what I'm about to say. In SEO, those numbers are referred to like this. The first number is called the A class. The second number is called the B class. The third number is called the C class, and the fourth number is called the D class. Now, that's not what that actually means.
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Okay?
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A class in real life refers to a range of IP addresses. B class refers to a different range. Okay? Like it refers to specific numbers. Don't worry about that.
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Okay?
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Please don't email me and say grumpy SEO guy. That's not really what A class and B class and C class and D class mean. Because like I said in the other episode, I think it was episode four, where we talk about how to host a website correctly for your private blog portfolio. I admitted that's not what it actually means, but when you're talking SEO, for some reason, that's what it means. People just use the words that way. I don't know why, I don't know where it came from. So just be very clear. So, for example, a class IP address does not refer to the first number anywhere outside of SEO conversations.
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Okay?
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You don't need to email me. I know that that's the case. I'm just explaining it because this is how it works in SEO.
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Okay?
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So let's say you find an IP address and let's say it's got four numbers, okay? And I'm just going to make these numbers up and I'm going to make them really easy, okay? So you don't have to, like, write anything down. Let's say the IP address is 100-101-10.120.140. It's easy to remember, right? I don't know what website that is in real life. It doesn't matter. It's just an example. Okay, so you find a website that you want to get a link from, you look up its IP address, and you find it's 100.110.120.140. Okay, cool. Now, why is this important what you want to do when you look up the next website that you're getting a backlink from? And by the way, this is super important if you're buying backlinks on somebody's PBN or somebody's private blog portfolio. Okay, but it's also still important even if you're just getting links from somewhere else. Okay, now you look up the next website. You want to make sure that the numbers are unique at the first or the second octet. Octet just refers to the group of numbers. So the first number, that's the first octet, or the A class. The second number, that's the second octet. Or the B class, the C class, the third number, that's the third octet. And the fourth number, the D class, that's the fourth octet.
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Okay?
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You want to make sure that your IP addresses are different at the first or second octet.
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Okay?
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So that means your first website, you got a link from 100.110.120.140. Okay, cool. Now you're gonna get a backlink from another website. If the first number is not 100, you're totally fine. It doesn't matter what the other numbers are.
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Okay?
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If the first number is 100, look at the second number. Let's say it's something other than 110.
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Okay?
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You're fine. Doesn't matter. Now, this is where we get into problems a lot. Let's say the first number is 100 on both sites and the second number is 110 on both sites. Oh, well, so far these websites have the same IP address. Now let's look at the third octet. Okay, the third number, the C class. Let's see what's going on there. Okay. If the websites are not on different IPs at the second octet, or better, do not get backlinks from both of them. Okay, now, there's an exception to this rule, but I'm gonna explain why. This is a problem before we go any further, and then I'm gonna tell you the exception.
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Okay?
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So when people realize that IP addresses matter, what happened was some hosting companies went out and they bought blocks of IP addresses, okay? And they would sell different IP addresses to the same customer, but they were selling them on the third octet. So, for example, maybe this hosting company bought some IP addresses. So let's say they bought 110.120.130. And then they would also have 110120131 and 110120132 and so on.
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Okay?
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And by the way, that's called sequential IPs, because each one raised by one. We had 130, 131, 132, and so on.
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Okay?
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SEO hosting like that is a terrible idea in all cases. I'm not gonna get into it now. I could do an episode on why you should never use SEO hosting. A good idea. But listen, if you're. I'm just putting this as, like, a little comment. If you're looking for a host, don't buy from any hosting companies that offer something called SEO hosting. And some companies will have regular hosting, and then they also have, like, SEO hosting, right? And you can, like, pick if you want SEO hosting or not. Don't even buy from that company if they also happen to offer SEO hosting, even if you're not using it. Okay, I don't have time to get into the reasons now, but. But it's always a bad idea to associate with SEO hosting companies.
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Okay?
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I might do an episode on that, but for now, just stay away from them. A couple people have emailed me about a specific company. I'm not gonna list the company, but a couple people have emailed me about a certain company that has a very good price on SEO hosting. And I was like, do not use that company. Even if you don't use the SEO hosting aspect of them, stay away from that company.
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Okay?
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Anyways, we'll maybe talk about that again in the future, but. So these companies were offering IP addresses for multiple websites, and they said the search engines can't tell because they're on different IPs, but they are on sequential C class IPs. You know what? That's a footprint. That's super obvious. In fact, it's so obvious that Ahrefs, right, The website that I talk about sometimes, Ahrefs has a page that shows you if backlinks from websites to your website or whatever website you're looking at are on. Similar IP addresses. Okay, It's a bad idea. By the way, that's a cool section of ahrefs. I strongly recommend, if you have an AHREFS subscription, I strongly recommend that you use that if you are evaluating backlinks. Okay, but that's a different topic. The point is, it's such a bad idea that there are tools that exist that will tell you when it's happening. Okay, don't do it. Now, there's one exception to this, and I was actually just talking with a client about this recently. So, for example, some of our portfolio sites are on IP addresses that are the same A class number, so the first number, and the same B class number, so the second number. Okay, now the third number was totally different. Let me give you an example. These are not actually my IP addresses. Let's say the first site is on 100110120 and the second site is on 100110230.
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Okay?
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Like, totally unrelated, not even sequential, not even close. And one of them is hosted in America and one of them is hosted in Singapore, so they're not related. They're just coincidentally the same. Okay, but when you have sequential C class IPs, it's not coincidental. It's obviously a poorly done SEO job. So, look, you're probably not gonna find yourself in this position where you're checking IP addresses of websites and you're like, well, I can't get a backlink from this one because the IP address is too similar to this other one. Okay, but like, you probably will encounter this if you're ever talking to somebody who's trying to sell you PBN backlinks. Because most people build their PBNs wrong, and one of the ways that they do it is by using sequential C class hosting, because it seems like it'd be a smart idea. Oh, hey, we have different IP addresses. Oh, look how convenient it is to get them all from this company. Oh, this is a good idea. Nope, it's a terrible idea. So always be aware of this. And if you're ever buying links from somebody, ask them what kind of IP addresses are they on and if they're shifty or they don't give you a very clear and specific answer. I probably would not do business business with that person. If they say, oh, they're on SEO hosting. Nope, don't do business with that person. If they say, oh, they're on sequential C classes. Nope, don't do business with that person. If they say, oh, they're unique at the third octet probably don't do business with that person unless every single site happens to be a coincidental difference at the C class. Like the two examples that I just gave you where one is in America and one is in Singapore, and they're not sequential, but that's probably not the case. Okay, you want to make sure that backlinks are on websites that have unique IP values at the first and or second octet. Now, if the first numbers are different. I know I just said this. We're going to review. If the first numbers are different, it's fine. Doesn't matter what second numbers are. If the second numbers are different, it's fine. Doesn't matter what the third numbers are. If the second numbers are the same and third numbers are sequential. Nope, stay away. There's no cases where that's a good idea, so don't do it. And probably don't even get even one backlink on any of those sites because they're just gonna be associated with, like, bad stuff anyway that you don't want to. So you should just be aware of that. And then don't even worry about the fourth number because by the time you've gone through the first three, you know if you want to link there or not. Okay, it doesn't matter. Like, there's no such thing. Well, I don't think there's. I've never heard of something called, like, sequential D classes, because by the time you're at the third octet, like, who cares if they're sequential, don't get links there. And if they're not sequential, then you're fine, and the D class doesn't even matter. I hope that makes sense. Basically, ideally, you want every backlink on a unique IP, but that's not really possible because there's only 256 numbers.
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Okay?
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So if you were to ever get 257 backlinks, okay, there would be at least one number that's the same on the first octet, because you can't literally do it another way. But like I said, if the first numbers are different, you're fine. If the second numbers are different, it doesn't matter. If the first numbers are the same, you're still fine. If the first two numbers are the same, make sure that the third numbers are not sequential and make sure they are not in the same place.
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Okay?
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And there's tools online, Google, like IP address, location or something like that. And you'll find websites that will tell you physically where in the world a server is.
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Okay?
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It's kind of cool. Anyways, that's the first thing that you need to know. Like I said, it's probably not gonna be that applicable to you if you're just asking people for backlinks or you're doing guest posting or something like that. But if you're buying PBN links, yeah, it's super important. Okay, these are all super important, but that one is also super important. I feel like that was like a. Like a reflexive fallacy right there. Like, they're all super important, but this one is also super important, obviously. Anyway, let's talk about the next thing you need to look for. You want to make sure that a website does not have a lot of backlinks from certain places in the world. And I'm not saying this to be offensive because I don't care at all where anyone lives, but there are certain countries in the world, let's say they are known for engaging in a lot of spammy activities.
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Okay?
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So no offense to anything that I'm about to say, but I don't know another way to say it. If you're looking at a website and you're checking its backlinks, and a lot of its backlinks are from India or the Philippines or China, you probably don't want backlinks from that website. Unless, now there's exceptions. Unless your website is in India or the Philippines or China, in which case it would make sense. Look, if you live in India and your website is hosted in India and you deal with Indian customers or Indian traffic or like, whatever, I don't know, like the people that are reading your website are in India and you're getting backlinks from other Indian websites, that makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense, and that is not a problem. But if the website is an American company, for example, and 80% of their backlinks, for example, are from India, that's a little bit suspicious because you have to ask yourself, would that ever happen organically? Now look into it more. Maybe that website is actually like the American location of an Indian company. Okay, then that might make sense. Maybe that website deals with Indian clients. Well, then that might make sense. But it's also possible that that website, okay, tried some SEO, and whoever did their SEO bought a bunch of cheap backlinks from India, and it's probably spammed now. And so that's probably what happened. So you have to look into all of these things. Okay, now here's another thing to look for, since we're still on this topic. Look at the language of the backlinks. Let's say you're thinking about buying a backlink from what appears to be an American company's website.
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Okay?
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And I'm just using American here for fun. Like, you can literally replace that with any country in the world. In fact, it could not even be English. But the same theory applies. I'm just saying American. Okay, let's say you're thinking about buying a backlink from an American company. You check its backlinks. 80% of its backlinks are in Chinese. Well, okay, hold on for a second. Would that ever organically happen? Ask yourself, why would an English website in America have 80% of its backlinks in Chinese? Why would that ever happen? Why would it happen now? Is it possible that maybe they have a lot of Chinese clients? Yeah, totally possible. That is possible. But look into the website. Why is that happening? Are they visibly promoting themselves in China? Do they have Chinese on the website too? Can you pick English or Chinese on the homepage? No. Well, that's pretty suspicious then, isn't it? I thought so. So think about it. Think about why. Why would an American website have tons of backlinks? Predominantly backlinks in Chinese. Okay, Notice I didn't even say from China. I said in Chinese. Okay, why? Probably they are somehow associated with spam or they got negative SEO'd somehow, or something that is not going to be in your favor if you were to get a link from that website. Okay, Now, I'm not saying that foreign language backlinks are an immediate disqualification. I'm not saying that. In fact, if you look at successful companies, I would bet you that most of them have at least some backlinks that are not in the language that the website is written in.
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Okay?
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That would make perfect sense. But if a lot of them are in a language that has nothing to do with the website, that's pretty suspect. And I probably would not want a backlink from that website because they're probably either knowingly or unknowingly involved in suspicious SEO activity.
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Okay?
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That's all I'm gonna say about that. So it's not about what languages it is. It's about do these languages make sense? Or. Or are they getting negative SEO? Or maybe somebody bought some spammy backlink packages or something along those lines. Look into it. Check the backlinks. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush or Majestic. Find out what kind of backlinks they have, where they're coming from, what languages they're in, and language. You can just check that by looking at the anchor text, by the way, which is, like, one of the main things that you should look for anyway, and ask yourself, would this ever naturally happen? If the answer is yes, probably move on to the next step. It seems pretty decent. If the answer is no, don't get a backlink there, okay, let's talk about the next thing. Do not get backlinks from any websites that have any anchor text. And anchor text means the words in the backlinks, by the way. So if I link to you, whatever words I put in the backlink, that's the anchor text, okay? Do not get backlinks from any websites that have any anchor text that involves adult industries, okay? Or gambling or pharmacy. And when I say pharmacy, I mean buying drugs online but not having a prescription for them, okay? You know what I'm talking about. It's all over the Internet. Do not get backlinks from websites that have links with those anchor text, okay? Nothing good will come from that, trust me. Don't buy backlinks from any websites that have those, because if they're involved in those industries, they're either not the kind of websites you want backlinks from or they're being negative SEO'd, in which case you also don't want backlinks from them.
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Okay?
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Does that make sense? Like, maybe. Look, maybe one.
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Okay?
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Like, if you look at a website's backlink profile and they've got a thousand backlinks and, like, one of them is Viagra or something, like, who knows? Maybe there's more that are hidden, you know, Maybe like, I don't know, maybe somebody tried to negative SEO them and then got annoyed and stopped after the first link. I don't know. But I say this because I swear that, like, half the websites that I look up have at least one, like, Viagra backlink or something to it. And I'm just like. That doesn't even make sense. It's like a company that has literally nothing to do with that. And they have this one, like, random backlink with that as the anchor text. And I'm just like, all right, whatever. So you get the point. If they've got one out of, like, thousands, you're probably fine. But if they've got a significant percentage, ask yourself what's going on? View those websites with those backlinks.
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Okay?
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Where are they coming from? Are they coming from blog comment spam? Well, then it's probably negative SEO. And finally. And finally go to the website itself, which you should know about because you're looking into it and just have a look at the website. Does it look shady? Does it have a bunch of garbage content? Does it have spun content? Does it have keyword stuffed content? Okay, I've defined both of those terms for you before. Spun content is hopefully not used anymore. But spun. I'm sure it's still used. But spun content is when you take a blog post and you run every single word through a thesaurus so you get a result of unique content. Because remember, people think that unique content is all you need to rank, but it literally doesn't make sense when you read it. Okay, I mean, it kind of makes sense, but it doesn't sound natural at all. And keyword stuffed content is when you use your keywords too often in the content because you think that that is going to make you rank better, but it doesn't. And that hasn't even been a thing since like the mid-90s, so probably don't do that. But let me give you an example of what keyword stuffed content would look like. My favorite blue widgets are blue and widgets. And I don't have enough blue widgets, so I went to the blue widget store. When I got to the blue widget store, I realized that the blue widget store actually had more blue widgets than I had room for in my blue widget display case at my house. So the first thing I did at the blue widget store was buy a blue widget display case for my blue widget room in my house. I then went back to the blue widget store to see what blue widgets they had, et cetera. Nobody writes like that. That's terrible. That's keyword stuffing, okay? Because your keyword is stuffed, your keyword blue widgets, is stuffed in the content. Don't write like that. So have a look at the website. See what kind of websites they link to. Are they linking to shady websites? Who are they linking to when you're checking the website? We talked about what kind of links they should not have. They should not have adult gambling or pharmacy backlinks, okay? But they also should not be linking to those kinds of websites.
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Okay?
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So if you're checking this website, maybe let's just say, for example, it's a website in somebody's blog portfolio that is obviously being used for backlinks, even if it's not apparent from looking at it.
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Okay?
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Are they linking out to adult websites? Are they linking out to pharmacy websites? Are they linking out to gambling websites? Hmm. You should probably check on that, because you do not want Backlinks from websites that. That link to those kinds of websites. So you've checked the website. Does the website seem good quality? Does it have good quality content? Is the website indexed? So anyway, those are some of the things that you want to look for. Let's go over them again one more time for fun. IP addresses, are they unique at the first or second octet? If yes, keep going backlinks to that website. Where do they come from? Do they come from countries that have a lot of spam? If no, proceed to the next step. Do they have a lot of backlinks that are in a language that has absolutely nothing to do with what the website does? If the answer is no, keep going to the next step. Do they have any backlinks that deal with adult pharmacy or gambling? If the answer is no, keep going to the next step. Do they have good content? Do they have. Does all our content look like it actually belongs there rather than being spun or keyword stuffed? If the answer is yes, proceed to the next step. Look at who they link to. Are they linking to websites that make sense for them to do it, or are they linking to adult gambling and pharmacy websites? If they're linking to adult gambling and pharmacy websites, don't get a backlink from them. But if they're not, it might be a pretty decent website to get a backlink from. Now, you'll notice I didn't mention at all DA or PA or doctor or UR or TF or cf. I could literally do another episode on that. Oh, my gosh. But you know what? The most common question. Maybe I actually should have started with that. The most common question that I see recently is what kind of DA should I be looking at to get backlinks from, by the way, DA Domain authority, Page authority. All right, those are Moz metrics. Dr. Domain rank, URL rank. Those are Ahrefs metrics.
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Okay?
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TF trust flow, CF citation flow. Those are majestic metrics. Okay, look, everybody has their own metric. I think I've explained this before, but I'm gonna explain it again just for fun. Why do these exist? Okay, the short version. A long time ago, Google had something called PR page rank.
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Okay?
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It's a scale from 0 to 10. Although technically you could be negative one if you had a penalty, but whatever. 0 to 10. Basically, how much authority does your website have? Okay, and this was publicly available, by the way. So as soon as people realized that this was something that is considered in SEO, what do you think happened? People with high PR websites started selling backlinks. For more money than people with lower PR websites. Which again, makes sense because higher PR would give you more link juice. So, by the way, link juice is how much authority you get when you get a backlink. Go listen to the episode right before this one. I talk about that a little bit more. Anyways, now I'm just assuming at this point, as soon as Google realized what was happening, they said, hey, we can't publish this anymore. People are taking advantage of it. They're using it to manipulate the search results. We don't want people to know that the search results can be manipulated. So they stopped publishing it. That doesn't mean they stopped using it. It means they stopped publishing it. I'm pretty confident that Google still has some sort of pr, because obviously they're using authority, and PR is probably how they measure authority. It might not be named PR anymore. I don't know what they call it, okay? But I'm sure they use some value of authority. And you know what? It's never publicly available because people take advantage of it. I even have an episode called Things yous Can't Do Anymore because spammers ruined them. And looking at PR is one of them. I don't think I included that in the episode. But by the way, that's episode 33, SEO things you can't do anymore because spammers ruined them. Okay? So anyways, why is this important? As soon as PR disappeared and it was not publicly available anymore, everybody was like, how do I know how much authority my website has? So certain applications built their own version of it. For example, Moz, whom I previously mentioned, has something called DA Domain Authority and Page authority, okay? And by the way, PA is just like the authority of a certain page rather than of that entire domain, right? So, like, whatever. Anyways, now D A and PA and all the other ones that I mentioned before, they are estimates, okay? They are estimates. Sometimes they're pretty similar. Maybe a website will have high DA and it will also have high Dr. For example Dr. Domain rank. That's an AHREFS metric, okay? Sometimes they're different. How could they be different? Well, because they're estimates. Okay, think about, like, if you talk to two financial planners, right? And one of them says, you should definitely buy this stock, and the other one says, you should definitely not buy that stock. Well, why would they be giving different advice? Because they're estimates. I don't know if that was a good analogy, but I hope it made sense. Anyways, nobody knows what the actual PR is. Nobody knows what a website's Actual authority is.
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Okay.
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Does higher DA mean it's better than lower da? Not necessarily, because higher DA is still an estimate.
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Okay?
- [30:45]
A
And by the way, some of these metrics. I'm not going to talk about this more, but I'm just going to say one thing. Some of these metrics can be spoofed, okay? And if you want a little bit more detail, back in the day, once people realized kind of how PR was calculated, remember, PR is the one that's not used anymore or it's private now. Nobody, Google doesn't publish it anymore. You could fake pr. So what would happen is you would have these websites that were obviously trash, right? They had like no backlinks, nothing. Like you could look at them until they weren't good. They would be like PR7. All right. By the way, PR7 was super high. Like, I think it, I think it like exponentially decreased. Like every new website was pr0. And then as you got a little authority, it'd be like PR1, you get a little more. It's like PR2. And like google.com was PR10. But I don't know that there were any other PR10 websites on the Internet. There might have been. I'm sure there were like a couple. But you know, you would have like the, the very, very, very authoritative websites would be like, you know, PR9, PR8, PR7, and that kind of thing. And like normal people websites would be like PR1, PR2, PR3. Sometimes it would get pretty popular. And I say popular because that means it would get a lot of backlinks, which means it would get a lot of authority. And maybe It'd be like PR4, like PR5. But like normal people did not have anything above like a PR5. And I'm just, I'm kind of doing this from memory. Like, don't quote me on this. Don't be like, well, I had a blog that was PR7. Like good for you. Most people didn't. So by the time you got into PR6, PR7, like that area you're dealing with like big, well known, powerful websites and a backlink from them would massively help you.
- [32:20]
B
Okay?
- [32:22]
A
But people figured out how to spoof pr. So you'd have these like trash websites that said they were PR7. Now they said they were PR7. When you would check the PR of the website, it would say it was PR7, but it wasn't actually PR7. It was probably PR0 because it wasn't really helpful. But people would sell backlinks for so much money because it said PR7. And they thought they were getting a good backlink. But guess what? It didn't help them at all, because it wasn't actually PR7. It was PR0, right? Or like, something lower than PR7. So why am I telling you this? Any metric that you can measure, you likely can spoof it, okay? You can possibly fake it. So stop focusing on how big the DA number is. Look, how often do you see sellers that are like, da 90 backlinks, Dr. 70 backlinks? Like, okay, so they're telling. Like, are they really even that high? Like, that's what sells.
- [33:20]
B
Okay?
- [33:21]
A
If you're a noob and you're like, wait a minute, I need to get backlinks. Hmm. Well, I'm smart enough to know that it's not about the number of backlinks. It's about the quality of backlinks. I know I'm gonna buy only Dr. 90 backlinks or higher. And then you see somebody advertising 50dr. 90 plus backlinks, and it's like $10 or something, you're like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. No, it's a terrible idea. It's not gonna work that way. Stop focusing on the numbers. You can use them, okay? This is how I use the numbers, okay? And this might not be applicable to you, but who cares?
- [33:58]
B
Okay?
- [33:59]
A
They're all different because they're all using their own proprietary code.
- [34:04]
B
Okay?
- [34:05]
A
So what I do, I'll take the website in question, and I will run it through ahrefs, and I'll find out what the domain rank is. And then I will run it through Moz, and I'll find out what the domain authority is. And then I will run it through Majestic, and I'll find out what the trust flow and the citation flow are. And then I will run it through semrush, and I'll run it through all these different tools, and I will get an overall approximate number that I think might be correct.
- [34:33]
B
Okay?
- [34:33]
A
Sometimes they're pretty similar.
- [34:35]
B
Okay?
- [34:36]
A
If every website says it's over 50 or over anything, then it's probably over that number, okay? But if you get one, it's like 20, and one says it's two, and one says it's like five. Or you have another website and one says it's like 60, and another site says it's like seven. Another website says it's like 20. I don't know. Is one of those metrics wrong? Is one of them being faked? I don't know. Nobody knows. The only people who know is Google. And Google's not telling you what their PR is, so can't really do anything about that. Stop focusing on numbers. I feel like the more. Look, this might just be me. I feel like the more somebody focuses on the number itself, probably either the less clued into SEO they are or the bigger of a spammer they are because they know that people just want to buy backlinks on websites with big metrics. And so they sell on that instead of selling on quality, they sell on the numbers.
- [35:31]
B
Okay?
- [35:32]
A
Like, stop focusing on the numbers. Okay, look, if you look up a website. Okay, I'm just using this as an example. Let's say you look up a website. Let's say it has 60 backlinks, 50 from 50 unique domains, okay? And all of those, by the way, are on unique IP addresses, which we know all about now. Cause that was the first thing that we talked about in this episode. Let's say we did that, okay? I would be less concerned about what da that website is than the fact that it has a good, clean backlink profile. Okay, let's say you look up another website and it's got 1,000 backlinks from, let's say, 950 unique domains. And I'm just using that because I feel like every website I look up, there's always multiple links from the same domain. Like, unique domains never matches exactly the number of total backlinks, okay? So don't worry about it too much. As long as there's not a lot of websites providing a lot of links each. Like, that's kind of weird. Like, if you have a thousand backlinks and you have 10 domains linking to you, that's weird. That's like 100 backlinks from each domain. Why would that ever happen? Ask yourself, would that ever happen naturally? No, that's weird.
- [36:42]
B
Okay?
- [36:42]
A
But if you have 100 backlinks from like 90 or 95 or even 100 unique domains, that's a pretty good link structure.
- [36:51]
B
Okay?
- [36:52]
A
So if I'm looking at a website, what did I say, like a thousand. It has 1,000 backlinks from 950 or 990 unique domains, and they're all on good IP addresses and there's no spamminess, okay? And they're not from spammy countries, no offense to those countries. And they're not in other languages that have nothing to do with that website itself.
- [37:10]
B
And.
- [37:10]
A
And they don't have any links that are pharmacy, adult, or gambling. And they're not linking to any websites that are pharmacy, adult, or gambling, okay? I would be pretty satisfied with that. I'd be like, this is a good website. This is going to be a good backlink. And I probably wouldn't even care what the DA or whatever metric you like. I probably wouldn't even care what that was. But nobody's going to listen to this, and they're just going to keep focusing on the doctor and the D.A. and, hey, grumpy SEO guy, how much should I pay for a Dr. 70 backlink? I don't know, dude. Did you look at it? Listen to this podcast episode, do all the things I told you, and then ask me the question. When you can answer all of those questions, how many backlinks does it have? Where are they from, what languages are they in? What are the IP addresses, etc. Do that. I don't know. But I feel like even though I just explained this, nobody's gonna listen to it, and everybody's just gonna be like, hmm, I want a Dr. 70 backlink. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, Dr. 70 is cool. Does that mean that's better than Dr. 50? No. Does it mean it's better than Dr. 30? No, it just means it's Dr. Minus 70. I don't know what to tell you. And it doesn't. Nobody, Nobody's even gonna listen to this because people just want their big numbers, right? It's like, does a 70. Does a doctor minus 70 backlink assume you're gonna get more link juice from it than a doctor minus 50 backlink? No, of course not. It just means the number is higher. It might be fake. I'm not saying doctor can be faked. I'm saying some of these numbers can be faked.
- [38:38]
B
Okay?
- [38:39]
A
That's a whole other topic. And I'm certainly not going to tell you how to do it if it was possible. But, like, trying to clean up the SEO industry, not make it worse for everybody. But I'm just saying PR used to be able to be faked, and I'm quite certain that at least some of the SEO metrics that are available today that people still use can also be faked. So stop focusing on the numbers. Stop. Stop focusing on the numbers and start focusing on the website itself. You should still look at the numbers. Of course you should.
- [39:11]
B
Okay?
- [39:12]
A
All else being equal, higher numbers are better, but it doesn't mean that higher numbers are the best.
- [39:20]
B
Okay?
- [39:21]
A
Like I said, I would look at a website, I would check its backlink profiles, I would check the IP addresses. If it's on a private blog portfolio, okay? I check the language and the countries and all those things and I would see what's going on and I would check the anchor text and I would check the quality and I would check the content and I would check all the things we talked about. And if all of those things look good, I would want a backlink from that website. That's how I would do it. Rather than, well, what's the domain authority but you do you. I'm just telling you this is how I would do it. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about a summary of every single episode. So.